I know that this thread has been inactive for a long time, but I thought I would post a reply in hopes that someone might just come along and see it.
I read the thread and I have exactly the same problem that LMan was having. The only difference is that my player is a Creative Zen Vision M.
I have tried disconnecting and reconnecting my ribbon cable and replacing the hard drive to no avail. I even tried replacing the ribbon cable and it still froze on the ZEN screen.

If anyone could help me that would be awesome.

Thanks

If the drive you replace it with is in fact good & the Zif is installed properly then I would say the motherboard is the culprit of your problem.